‘A terrible, terrible, unforeseen tragedy’: Six construction workers presumed dead in bridge collapse

After a container ship hit a support column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday morning, sending it toppling into the Patapsco River in Baltimore’s outer harbor, authorities searched for six missing workers — futilely, said an executive with their construction company.

“We have seven wonderful employees who were on the bridge when it collapsed, six of whom are presumed dead,” Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice president of Brawner Builders of Hunt Valley, said after 6 p.m.

“It’s a terrible, terrible, unforeseen tragedy,” he said. “None of us could have imagined this could happen. We are all kind of shocked and distressed.”

He declined to identify the workers.

CASA, an immigrant assistance and advocacy group, said one of the workers was Miguel Luna, a married father of three who is from El Salvador and has lived in Maryland for 19 years.

“He left at 6:30 p.m. [Monday], for work and did not come home,” said Nkeshi Free, CASA deputy communications director. “His wife wishes to send a message that he come home safely to his family.”

Jesus Campos, a Brawner Builders construction worker, said during the day Tuesday that his missing co-workers were all Hispanic men, responsible for replacing concrete on the bridge.

Father Ako Walker, a priest at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Highlandtown, said he spent the day accompanying the families of the missing workers as they waited for news. He said the Archdiocese of Baltimore also held a Mass for the families Tuesday.

Walker said the families were confused and dazed. “It’s difficult for them,” he said in an interview after the prayer vigil. “There’s a lot of tears.” He said that because his congregation is mostly Hispanic, there is a good chance that some of his parishioners have a connection to one of the families.

Earlier reports said there were eight construction workers fixing potholes on the bridge when it collapsed. One worker declined to go to a hospital. Another was transported to R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center by ambulance, but has since been discharged, according to a hospital spokesperson.

Members of the crew aboard the cargo ship Dali sounded the alarm that their ship had lost power before the 1:27 a.m. crash. Dali’s owners said in a statement that the vessel’s crew and two pilots were accounted for and no injuries had been reported.

Hours later, Baltimore Fire Department Chief James Wallace said authorities had detected the presence of vehicles in the water by using sonar. Rescuers are using sonar and underwater drones to search the water, which is about 50 feet deep. Divers also are scouring the water, which was 49 degrees at 4 a.m., according to the National Data Buoy Center.

There are multiple ways to become seriously injured in a bridge collapse, said Dr. David Efron, chief of trauma at Shock Trauma at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “The height alone is a potentially lethal problem,” Efron said, but people could also be trapped beneath metal or concrete and crushed.

Hypothermia and drowning present major risks for people who fall into the water at that temperature. “I can’t give you an exact time because you hear about outliers, but with them being submerged for more than an hour, [it’s] almost invariably not going to be survivable,” he said.

Asked Tuesday afternoon whether there is any chance the missing workers were still alive, Efron said, “I never would want to say absolutely zero.”

Dr. Rishi Kundi, a critical care surgeon at Shock Trauma who was on call when a patient from the bridge arrived at the hospital around 2:30 a.m., said remaining in cold water for hours is a problem “that compounds upon itself.” Even a person who survived in water at Tuesday night’s temperatures for three hours would lose consciousness after the first hour, he said.

Campos, the Brawner worker, was at the scene during the day Tuesday with a heavy heart.

“It takes courage to work there and you have to be trained,” he said in Spanish. “My heart hurts because of what’s happening,” Campos added. “We are human beings and they are my co-workers. The situation is tough, and I hope God helps them get out alive.”

Campos, who visited the media checkpoint on the south side of the bridge Tuesday, said he had been working the night shift on the bridge a month ago, but had since been moved onto a day shift.

“I could have been there,” he said. Campos said police came to the homes of his missing crew members Tuesday.

His co-workers hailed from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Campos, who is Salvadoran, had been working for Brawner Builders for eight months, but said his co-workers had been with the company for longer.

“I feel devastated with what happened. They are all my friends, they are co-workers. I feel very sad,” Campos said.

Family members of the missing construction workers reached out to local organizations that aid immigrants for help.

Lucia Islas, president of Comité Latino de Baltimore, said two workers’ relatives contacted her to find out where they could get information about their missing family and to request help with language interpretation. The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs was helping translate for family members Tuesday, she said.

“They wanted to know first who they can contact to know about their families, if they already found the body,” Islas said. “These two people, they were crying.”

The women who called Islas were related to two different men from the South Baltimore neighborhood of Brooklyn and had originally immigrated from El Salvador, she said.

Islas was among a group of East Baltimore advocates for immigrants who quickly mobilized to help immigrant families displaced by a fatal Baltimore Highlands fire in February that killed three members of the same family, two of them children. That crisis highlighted the need for greater language access in emergency services in Baltimore, she and other community leaders said.

Pritzker of Brawner said the company’s owner, whom he declined to name, spent the morning with family members of the workers. “Everybody is upset,” he said, “That’s all I can say.

“It’s a terrible, terrible, unforeseen tragedy,” he said. “None of us could have imagined this could happen. We are all kind of shocked and distressed.”

José Luis Sánchez Pando of Tribune Content Agency assisted with translation.